Building the Beast: How free agency affected the 2026 NFL Draft
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hey, the Chiefs and Saints both need running backs, they could both be potential landing spots for Jeremiyah Love! Ope, guess again. Hey, the Rams need help in the secondary, surely they're going to use at least one of their first-round picks on a corner. Ope, guess not (and so long, say so long to one of those first-round picks, too). Activity in free agency always changes what we think about the upcoming draft, and this year was no different. Dane Brugler and Dave Helman discuss how the results of free agency affected what we think about the 2026 NFL Draft on this episode of The Athletic Football Show's Building the Beast.
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Host: Dave Helman
Co-Host: Dane Brugler
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Dave on X: @davehelman_
Follow Dane on X: @dpbrugler
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to another episode of Building the Beast. |
| 0:05.6 | I am Dave Hellman, and we are back from our free agency sabbatical. |
| 0:09.4 | Dane Bruegler and myself, I dragged Dane out of his tape lab where he is very, very diligently watching all of the prospects he needs to finish this year's edition of The Beast. |
| 0:22.7 | Took more of a 30,000 foot view for this episode, though, rather than the granularity of the |
| 0:29.0 | beast. |
| 0:29.4 | We're going to reset the top of the 2026 NFL draft. |
| 0:33.1 | So much changed during free agency. |
| 0:35.9 | Even during the time we were getting ready to record this episode, |
| 0:39.6 | the Miami Dolphins traded Jalen Waddle to the Denver Broncos. |
| 0:43.2 | So another team with multiple first round picks in the 26 NFL draft. |
| 0:48.7 | We talked about all of those teams with their multiple picks, |
| 0:51.7 | how they could influence things, |
| 0:52.9 | and how teams decisions in free agency affected what the top of the 2026 draft looks like. |
| 0:59.2 | Who has a very clear map to their pick, whose future is a little more uncertain or a little |
| 1:04.7 | hazier than we thought, and what we think might happen when we finally get to the end of April. |
| 1:09.2 | Really fun thought exercise with Dan Bruegler. we finally get to the end of April. Really fun thought exercise with Dane Bruegler. |
| 1:11.9 | Let's get to it. |
| 1:17.6 | Well, Dane, I'm excited to bring you back out to the macro view, the 30,000-foot view of the draft, |
| 1:23.7 | because what you just told me, unsurprisingly, is in mid-March, you are in the trenches of |
| 1:31.1 | getting the beast actually ready for publication. And before we got set to record, you were watching |
| 1:36.9 | D2 college tape. So to go from D2 college tape with like the bounce house on the sideline and 300 people in the stands to go from |
| 1:47.1 | that to talking about the top 10 of the first round of the draft that's that's quite a culture shock |
... |
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